


so i wait and i try, i confess all my crimes

by r1ker



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 18:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10497168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: lil dribbly poo





	

**Author's Note:**

> lil dribbly poo

LeFou makes it back to their tent before Gaston does. He spends the first few minutes stripping his body of its war equipment, shucking it off the second he crosses the threshold into the canvas dwelling. On their shared bedroll he lies back in nothing but his underclothes. He can feel the cold sweat from his back seeping into the linens but can't bring himself to care. There's not much he can do about it seeing as how the entire legion is out in the middle of nowhere with no access to a creek to drink out of, let alone to wash clothes in. LeFou begins to slip away into rest just as the fold of a door to the tent is ripped back.

 

Gaston doesn't say a word as he stands in the entrance and these alone sets off its fair share of alarms in LeFou's head. He's, for lack of a better word, stunned, condemned to stand where he is with nothing but a strange sense of disappointed shock on his face. LeFou does about the only thing he knows to do, and stands, throwing on his undershirt before standing in front of Gaston, his hands on the man's shoulders.

 

Before Gaston can object LeFou pulls him down into an embrace. It's a little awkward with the height difference and posture polarity considering Gaston is stiff as a board. But it's not long after it's begun does it start to feel extraordinarily natural to LeFou. Gaston practically molds himself around the man's body and does nothing but hold on, as if they're both nearing a swift current with no sort of anchor. "I know you're tired," LeFou mumbles somewhere in the place where Gaston's hair curls behind his ear.

 

Slowly they both begin to ease themselves back onto the bedspread and LeFou finds himself with an armful of Gaston, a tousled head on the inlay of his breastbone, warm and bare chest pressed against him. LeFou puts a hand to his hair without another word and lets strands of it pass between the gaps of his fingers. The body in his arms is shaking just enough to make his grip on LeFou grow tighter and tighter.

 

Gaston doesn't say a word, so LeFou leans down, mouth to Gaston's ear, and says, "Anytime you don't want to do this anymore, you tell me." Gaston scoffs at that, thinking a captain's job isn't done until the last pile of dirt is piled on his grave, but maybe there is a threshold. He doesn't suppose that he's reached it yet from his perspective but he considers leaving this behind for a split second, taking LeFou to the wood they'd frequent in the highest point of hunting season. It's petulant for him to abandon his troops for the sake of some fleeting love he's got for someone he's known since he was eleven.

 

"You'd think I were a fool," Gaston murmurs with his head turning into LeFou's touch, his ears being passed over with mindless thumbs. There is where LeFou thinks Gaston is at his most handsome, eyes blinking futilely as he fights sleep, trying to reciprocate what affection LeFou is giving him. He's beautiful, he's absolutely infuriating 16 hours out of the day, and LeFou wouldn't have it any other way. "I lose the stars and bars of the captainship and become a domestic goddess. I burn water, LeFou." LeFou snickers into the top of Gaston's head. "Laughing like you didn't eat what I made the last time we had dinner together."

 

"I'd starve if it meant not seeing you like this," LeFou looks down Gaston's back at the scars rising above the smooth skin dotted with freckles. There's a large one that vivisects the curvature of Gaston's spine, remnants of what once was a close call in their early days in the infantry. LeFou can remember how little he knew about stitching a wound having to grow into an encyclopedic knowledge in a matter of seconds. Fortunately no damage was left but if LeFou focuses on the silence that passes between him and Gaston now, he can still hear the man's cries, so unlike the once unflappable rookie.

 

Outside the night thickens and the tent is now completely black, what light from the moon coming through the canvas now completely extinguished. LeFou wouldn't sleep if he had a gun to his head; for one it'd mean not being there for Gaston at this moment in time, the both of them coming down from the exhausting adrenaline of war. He still holds onto him and ignores stoically the way his knees ache in the position he's lying in. Below him Gaston begins to tell some story about when they were boys, long before they picked up guns and knives. "So scared when I first met you. Tears on your face, moss on your knees where you were hiding behind that tree."

 

LeFou remembers that day well and feels one of Gaston's arms settling over him much like it did over his shoulders in an effort to get him to stop crying. It had worked – along with a trip back to the village for a shared snack of rejected confections from the local bakery – and from that moment on they hadn't left each other's side. When Gaston signed up for the army LeFou was right behind him with the same form completed. Assigned to the same legion and made superior and inferior, there wasn't a chance in hell they'd be leaving each other anytime soon.

 

When Gaston finally goes to sleep, his words trailing into nonsense and jaw-cracking yawns, LeFou leans over him, bringing him ever closer to him. There he can feel every slow and steady breath that rises and falls as Gaston sinks deeper and deeper into rest. He'd punish whoever sought to disrupt them both at this minute but save his most potent wrath for whoever made Gaston the target of their seek and destroy, like so many wanted to. If there was any destruction to be done it was to be done by them both to the world they found themselves thrust into in spite of all that's developed between them.


End file.
